Stoke-on-Trent Local History

The development of the pottery villages during the late 16^th and the 17^th century. 
    (Making of the Six Towns - p.23)

 The scattered clusters of dwellings began to look more like villages or even small towns. By 1700 there were about 70 houses in Burslem, along with a number of potbanks, but apart from Burslem, the only other places with the appearance of villages were Penkhull and Hanley.

 Penkhull's settlement was located around its green, where the church now stands. Hanley originally consisted of the two small hamlets half a mile apart, on at the junction of Town Road and Keelings Road, the other centred on the modern market and called Hanley Green. The church was not built until the middle of the 18^th C. The modern town incorporates the old village of Shelton, which was extensively developed on its northern boundary in the early 19^th C., seen in the geometric layout of streets west of Stafford / Lichfield Streets.

 Tunstall only existed as a string of cottages along a cart track, though in the 16^th C. it had six open fields of nearly 100 acres. Fenton was a line of cottages along the main road (Lane Delph) and two small centres a mile apart, Great and Little Fenton. Longton consisted of Lane End along the road and a second cluster of houses towards Blurton. There were other linear settlements by the end of the 18^th C., at Hot Lane, Sneyd Green, Cobridge, Shelton and Goldenhill, as well as small villages like Bucknall, Blurton, Hanford, Milton and Norton.

 Rather than the original villages expanding outwards in all directions a new kind of settlement pattern closely tied to the primitive roads through the area was establishing itself. Some examples of the type of cottages being built still survive (2000) as in Broad Street, Hanley and Newcastle Street, Longport.

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